Chaos In Afghanistan, Pandemonium At Home
Biden administration appears headed towards losing control on the ground -- and the narrative -- when it comes to the disintegration of Afghanistan
For much of the last week — even as conditions in Afghanistan worsened and Americans back home were bombarded with heart-wrenching images borne of the brutality of the resurgent Taliban — President Biden and his administration appeared to project a strength, a calm amidst the storm, as it were.
The president outlined a 5-point plan for US involvement in Afghanistan going forward, and appeared to take a certain personal and historical responsibility when he said that the US occupation there had gone on too long — through the administrations of four of his predecessors in the White House — proclaiming, almost defiantly, “I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”
However, in the last day or so, both Biden and his administration appear to have lost some of that steadiness: both in the reality on the ground in Afghanistan, as well as the necessary political narrative.
The situation in Afghanistan has imploded this week, as the resurgent Taliban — which had been making startling gains across the country since the withdrawal of the last US troops from Afghanistan, despite facing a larger and better-equipped Afghan military — finally took control of the capital city of Kabul and Afghanistan's president fled the country.
Biden was forced to send several thousand US troops back into Afghanistan to protect the evacuation of American citizens and vulnerable Afghan nationals.
Asked in an on-air interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News about the pandemonium swirling amid Afghanistan, Biden replied, “Oh, there is, but, look, but no one is being killed right now. God forgive me if I’m wrong about that, but no one is being killed right now. People — we got a thousand — 1,200 out yesterday, a couple thousand a day, and it’s increasing. We’re going to get those people out.”
Biden and the Democrats have reason to be concerned. Some 57 percent of registered voters say that the US government didn't do enough to get Americans and Afghan allies out before the Taliban takeover, according to a new Hill-HarrisX public opinion poll.
Taliban fighters reportedly are using violence to turn as many Afghan nationals as possible away from reaching the safety and evacuation of the airport in Kabul.
“So if you are an ordinary Afghan, if you’re one of the tens of thousands who have given everything to the U.S. or various different NATO allies in terms of working with them over the past two decades and you are now trying to get into the airport, that is not for the faint of heart,” said Clarissa Ward, CNN's correspondent in Afghanistan. “You are really running the gauntlet there. There are a huge number of obstacles and dangers to confront and there’s no guarantee that you’ll even get there.
“I interviewed one member of former president Ashraf Ghani’s presidential guard. He said, 'I would go to the airport tomorrow if I could to flee, because if I stay here I’m going to be killed. But at this stage, I can’t risk it because so few people are even able to get into the airport,'” Ward added.
A sense of confusion seemed to grip some of the administration's top spokespeople.
Asked just how many US citizens remain to be evacuated out of Afghanistan, the Pentagon spokesman couldn't say.
“I don’t know. The State Department would be a better place to go for an estimate of how many Americans are in Afghanistan or in and around Kabul. That is not a figure that the United States military would know,” spokesman John Kirby said. “And I think as you also know, not every American citizen in another country — there is no obligation that they register their presence and that you can have a perfect, accurate count."
Except the State Department wasn't any more help as two reporters attempted to pin spokesman Ned Price down for specifics.
“Christina, we’re talking about a very different universe here, we’re talking about American citizens, we're talking about third country nationals, we're talking about Afghan nationals,” Price told Christina Ruffini, of CBS News.
Clearly growing frustrated, however, a second reporter followed up: “She was talking about American citizens. We're asking about American citizens. You know how many Americans have contacted you and asked to get out. Why can’t you tell us?”
TV journalist David Gregory, now a CNN political contributor, said that Biden made a serious mistake in not preparing the American people for this contingency and the possibility of the heart-wrenching scenes coming from Afghanistan which they currently are witnessing daily.
“I think the president made a mistake by not preparing the American people for what could have been this reality. You know, you put some high bars out there, saying particularly that, you know, as you heard in the interview, as George Stephanopoulos pressed him, he said it wasn’t going to be likely, it was unlikely the Taliban would come back quickly like this. And two, he said this is not going to be any kind of withdrawal like you saw in the final days of Vietnam. Both of those things have proven to be untrue,” said Gregory, a former host of NBC's Meet The Press. “That’s what the president is facing now, is a situation on the ground that he doesn’t have a handle on and the military saying they’re not even certain they can get everybody out who they want to get out.”
Richard Clarke, a former State Department and counter-terrorism official in both Democratic and Republican administrations, warned of even worse possibilities to potentially face the Biden administration.
“It’s hard to imagine what leverage we have, other than saying we’ll give [the Taliban] money. We have a lot of Afghan assets. We have probably billions of dollars that belong to the Afghan government locked away in the treasury somewhere. But it would be disgusting, I think, to the American people to think that we would pay to get our people out,” Clarke said. “And aside from paying, I don’t know what leverage we have. What are we going to do? You know, we bombed them for 20 years. I don’t think that scares them, anymore. I don’t think we have much leverage.
“And what leverage do we have over what happens to the 5,000 terrorists that they let loose out of the prison in Bagram? None. We have no leverage about what happens to them,” Clarke added. “Do they go back to being part of Al Qaeda? Do they get back to their home countries and start terrorist activities there? The point is: If it is true that they looked at every possibility and they had a plan for every possibility. Then, they found this situation acceptable. And it’s not acceptable. It’s damaging our reputation as a country. Our allies all around the world and — and our enemies are looking at us as a greatly diminished power because we weren’t able to carry this off properly.”
Do you find this post of value?
Please share it…